Addresses (STREET VS. MAILING)

A tremendous number of homes in the Poconos have no street address, only the number on the mailbox. And the post office that services those mailboxes is often not in the same municipality.

So a lot of folks get the wrong idea about where they live, based on their mail.

"I live in East Stroudsburg," some will say. Quite a few will say that, because the East Stroudsburg post office is the mail hub for a great many delivery routes that extend into several other municipalities. People who get their mail through an "East Stroudsburg" mailing address may actually live in Smithfield, Middle Smithfield, or Price townships, or even farther away.

Well, a lot of the time, it doesn't. But you pay your taxes based on what municipality you live in, so if you have a tax issue to resolve, you need to know. And you need to know which municipal officials represent you - and spend your tax money. They're also the ones who fix your local roads. And if you need an ambulance or a fire truck or a police officer, telling 911 you live in "East Stroudsburg" could add time to the emergency response as they try to sort it out and figure out where you really live - which could be many long, traffic-congested miles away from where they went based on your call. Where you live depends on what emergency services provider gets the call.

United Parcel Service and other delivery services sometimes refuse to deliver to some people who have only a mailbox number. They want a real street address - 1116 Juniper Avenue, not Box 38987.

So - before too much time goes by - get a map. Pin down where you live. It might be important.

This confusion is gradually coming to an end. Efforts are under way in some municipalities to assign real street addresses, so that the emergency response system can join the 21st Century. It's a slow process, because the previous lack of a system for naming roads, coupled with booming development since 1980, means we have - for instance - six streets named Maple in Tobyhanna Township, three Roads Ends in Tunkhannock, and Cedars, Spruces and Pines without end. Renaming streets so there is only one of each in each municipality is part of the process of straightening out the madness. It's happening. But for now, you're on your own.